This weekend I went to a bunch of locations in Italy, all of which were spectacular. Friday was a bus trip with a bunch of kids from the program to Siena and then San Gimignano. Unfortunately, it was a really rainy day and of course I forgot my umbrella. Most of what I remember of Siena is trying not to fall because I was wearing slippery sandals, and trying to stay under friends umbrellas. Siena was a really nice town, and I can imagine it being beautiful on a sunny day. We got to see supposedly “the prettiest square in Italy,” which was a cute piazza. We also visited the church of San Domenico, which has the actual head of St. Catherine on display. It was soooo weird. We ate in a really cute restaurant and I got a delicious salad.
After lunch we got back in the bus and traveled to San Gimignano which I absolutely loved! It got sunny once we were there, which could be why I loved it so much more. We got to climb a really tall bell tower on top of which had the best view I think I have ever seen in my life. We could see the beautiful town below and then miles and miles of green. This was definitely a town worth visiting, more so than Siena.
Saturday I took a trip to Venice with my two friends Kelly and Ekta. This one of the coolest places I have ever been! There are over 400 bridges in Venice and each of them is beautiful. We took a gondola ride which was totally worth the money that we spent on it. We got to go through the canals and under bridges that not many tourists know about, so it was very quaint and picturesque. Some other gondolas had musicians on them, so we got serenaded every once in a while. That day we also got to see St. Mark’s cathedral, which was really neat to see since it is so famous. St. Mark’s square was packed with tourists and pigeons. The pigeons are like ants…sooo many of them. Venice is known for its masks, so there are mask stores everywhere you turn. We went into one store in which the man who owned it, dressed up in a costume for us, and showed us which masks would look best on us. He was pretty excited about all the masks he made.
That night we stayed at a hostel that we found out wasn’t actually in Venice! We started to freak out (and when I say we, I really mean myself). It’s a long story, but we eventually found our way to our hostel late at night by pure luck. It turned out that it wasn’t even a hostel, but a hotel with free continental breakfast. So it worked out for the best, but it was a little stressful when we realized the hostel was a 25 minute train ride outside of Venice. Luckily my two friends are really laid back and chill about everything, which made me stay calm in a situation that could have turned out a lot worse.
The following day we returned to Venice and visited Murano which is an island that is famous for its glass. We went to a glass museum which has lots of glass sculptures, but I would not recommend going to this museum. If you go into all of the glass shops on the island, it is more interesting than the museum. Also we went to a glass factory where they show you how they make bowls and glass horses. The guy literally made a beautiful glass horse in five minutes. It was really impressive. Then we returned to the main island and met up with some other girls from our program and took a boat tour around the grand canal of Venice. Overall, this was one of the coolest weekends of my life.
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